BurnTest vs Microsoft Clarity

What Microsoft Clarity does

Microsoft Clarity is a tool designed for those who want to understand how users interact with their website through visual data. It provides free heatmaps that show where users click, scroll, and linger, helping you visualize user engagement. Session recordings let you watch real user interactions, revealing patterns like rage-clicks, where users repeatedly click out of frustration, and dead-clicks, where clicks lead to no response. These insights are based on your site's traffic, requiring you to install a script that captures these interactions automatically. Clarity operates without human narration, focusing purely on quantitative data. This makes it suitable for analyzing broad user behavior trends over time. For a comprehensive look at what Microsoft Clarity offers, visit Microsoft Clarity.

What BurnTest does

BurnTest takes a different approach by using real people to interact with your website, narrating their thoughts as they attempt to make a purchase. This provides you with a video of their experience, a transcript, and an AI-generated list of fixes along with a Fire Score. The feedback is typically delivered within 1-2 days. BurnTest starts by offering a free burn, allowing you to see firsthand how a stranger navigates your site. Subsequent burns are available in packs starting at $5 per burn, with no subscriptions or expiration on credits. This service provides qualitative insights, focusing on the 'why' behind user actions. To understand more about how BurnTest works, visit our How it Works page.

They do X, we do Y

Microsoft Clarity and BurnTest serve different purposes in user experience analysis. Clarity relies on automated data collection, offering heatmaps and interaction data without human input. It requires you to install a script on your site to track user behavior. In contrast, BurnTest employs vetted reviewers who provide narrated experiences, giving you a deeper understanding of user frustrations and confusions. While Clarity is free, BurnTest offers a pay-as-you-go model with credit packs that never expire. This allows you to get detailed feedback as needed, without ongoing costs. For specifics on our pricing, visit our Pricing page.

When to use Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity is ideal for ongoing monitoring of user interactions with minimal setup. If your goal is to gather data on how users generally behave on your site, Clarity's heatmaps and session recordings offer a continuous, cost-free solution. It's particularly useful for identifying patterns and trends over time, such as which areas of a page get the most attention or where users frequently drop off. This tool is perfect if you need to track user behavior at scale without requiring detailed human feedback. It provides a broad overview of user interactions, helping you make data-driven decisions about site design and functionality.

When to use BurnTest

BurnTest is best suited for situations where you need in-depth human feedback to understand why users aren't converting. Our service is designed to pinpoint specific issues in the user journey, providing actionable insights from real people. Each burn gives you qualitative data, highlighting areas of confusion, frustration, or delight in the user experience. This makes BurnTest an excellent choice for businesses looking to solve conversion problems with targeted fixes. You can try it risk-free with your first free burn, making it easy to see how a real person interacts with your site and what changes could improve their experience.

Keep going

If you want to act on this today: run the free AI Fire Score on your URL, read the BurnTest blog on first impressions and checkout friction, see the hotjar session recordings page, see the burn vs heatmaps page. Your first burn is free, and a real person will have watched your site, usually within 1–2 days.